Tuesday, June 16, 2015

The Ultimate List of Dark Milk Chocolate Bars

Updated July 16, 2016

Dark Milk Chocolate is a new type of chocolate that has all the antioxidants
of dark chocolate, but all the melt-in-your-mouth taste of milk chocolate. If
you love it as much as I do, see the list below to find out which brands make
it, where you can buy it, and how much you can expect to spend. To learn more about
what Dark Milk Chocolate is and why it is currently a trendy chocolate treat,
please read my article about Dark Milk Chocolate posted today on the Food Bloggers of Canada site.

When reading this list, keep in mind that the percentage of cocoa solids
means the total amount of cocoa butter plus cocoa mass (bean).So after cocoa %, what’s in the rest of dark
milk chocolate? Milk solids and sugar, which can also be played with to create
something sweeter or something creamier. In some cases, as you will see from
the list below, the ‘milk’ may be goat’s milk or coconut milk. To make your own
dark-milk chocolate with coconut milk, get the recipe here.

Before we get into the list, here are a few tips….

How
to approach a Dark-Milk chocolate tasting:

1.Plan ahead. In
Canada it is not yet easy to purchase a variety of dark-milk chocolates to
taste and compare. But it is possible
through the specialty retailers (see list below). Just give yourself a week or
two to acquire the chocolate you need.

2.Stick to chocolates
within the 50% to 70% range within one tasting. If you want to compare a lighter milk
chocolate, such as Valrhona’s creamy 46% Lait Bahibe, wait until the end of the session to
taste it. Otherwise you may set yourself up to dislike the darker varieties.

3.Find a good mix
of bars to taste and stick to four or five at a time. Suggested tasting line-ups are coming to the blog soon. Stay tuned here for the link.

Taste:
Creamy and smooth texture with a taste that is still tart and sour like most
dark-milk chocolates over 50%, but milkier and sweeter than some others than
that I have tried.It has a very milky
colour. I liked this one a lot.

Taste:
Delicious, smooth with perhaps a floral and coffee flavour, along with
burnt caramel. Very smooth, creamy and sweet, but a dark colour. Made with
Forastero beans, it is sweet and creamy and no sour cream flavour like many of
the other dark-milk chocolates. I have revisited this chocolate time and time
again. It is delectable.

Taste:
This bar has a bright and sunny flavour that is sweet, milky and with the taste
of vanilla and hints of flower and fruit. Like Ambrosia’s Ghana bar, there is
no hint of the tart sour cream flavour common in other dark-milks and it melts
away nicely in the mouth. Certainly a favourite!

Taste:
Dark and milky hot cocoa flavour. This bar truly says ‘dark-milk’ to me and is
one of my favourites. Not overly high in cocoa butter, like Bonnat’s or Michel
Cluizel, but instead it is an enjoyable balance of sweet and bitter. The aroma
has a hint of sweet berry, and the bar is more tart than sour, which is a nice
change from most other dark milks which have a heavy sour cream flavour. Thin
pieces, although not delicately thin, offer a full flavour of a dark chocolate
milk or properly made, natural hot cocoa with only a touch of sweetness and a
vanilla that is detectable but complimentary. To me it also has a ‘chewy
caramel’ flavour (not hard caramel, but the dense kind that melt away in your
mouth nicely).

Taste:
Smooth, soft and buttery as though high in cocoa butter, but no real cocoa
butter flavour. Milk is the first ingredient in the list, so the fatty
mouthfeel may be from milk fat rather than cocoa butter as in most of the other
creamy bars. Rich dark milk chocolate colour, surprisingly has a slight sour
cream or sour milk flavour for a 50%, especially when considering that Michel
Cluizel’s 40-something % milk chocolate bar does not have that tart flavour.
Nice lingering roasted cocoa bean flavour, plus the distinct flavours of
Madagascar cacao, although muted, are still there.The beantobar.co.ukwebsite says it has a ‘sweet toffee finish’. It is definitely worth a try and if
you don’t believe me, believe this: it won a Bronze at the Academy of Chocolate
in 2009.

Taste:
I tasted one older bar (slightly past expiry) and one newer one (expiry Jan 2,
2016). The older one had not gone bad, but it did have that familiar taste of
sour cream, although not overly so. The newer one had only a slightly tangy and
acidic taste, but less like sour cream. There was a nice snap with a smooth and
quick melt (at a cool room temperature), with a lightly creamy texture.
Patric’s has a very deep chocolate colour and rich, deep cocoa flavour that
truly identifies as a mix between dark and milk chocolate. There is a little sea salt in the ingredients, which is not so
noticeable as a ‘salted flavour’, but it certainly makes the chocolate a
savoury treat. This would be a delicious hot cocoa flavour.

Taste:
This bar looks and tastes like a dark chocolate bar and is completely different
than all the other dark-milk chocolate bars thathave tasted. The percentage is similar to
Bonnat’s, but you could not find two more different chocolate bars. Bonnat’s
are milky and creamy and light in colour, Slitti’s bar looks about as dark as
an 80%, and has very little milky or creamy flavour. It is certainly bitter and
reminds me of dark chocolate made of Forastero beans.

Taste:
The aroma is the faint smell of goat’s cheese, and the colour is a beautiful
deep, dark and almost red-like brown shade. As you put this chocolate in your
mouth, it is quite shocking at the flavour difference from regular chocolate.
With 69% cacao solids, this bar does not leave much room for the goat’s milk
and sugar, yet the chevre or goat’s cheese flavour is so strong that it almost
tastes like you are eating the cheese. It is creamy and the quality of the
chocolate is quite good. I think you would need to love the taste of goat
cheese, or drink goat’s milk regularly, to truly enjoy this chocolate. Although
if you are a curious foodie, this is worth a try simply because it’s flavour is
so interesting.

This
is listed as $9 (US) in Hawaii, but cost me $11.50 (CAD) in Canada at JoJo Coco (Ottawa).

Taste: Bonnat Surabaya, Asfarth and Java are
65% dark chocolates each made from a different Indonesian plantation. Bonnat’s
bars, on the other hand, are extremely high in cocoa butter, which explains the
light, milky colour and very buttery texture.

Bonnat’s Surabaya dark-milk chocolate, also with 65% cocoa
solids, has a mild tobacco and strong hint of campfire smoke flavour. It is
less smoky in flavour and not quite as creamy as the Asfarth (yet still
creamier than nearly all the other dark-milk chocolate bars that I’ve tasted).
Slightly savoury and slightly less sweet than Asfarth.

Bonnat’s Asfarth chocolate has a brighter flavour than
Surabaya, but a heavier smoke and smoked food flavour (as in smoked meat and
peppery taste, but with no actual meat taste). This is the creamiest dark-milk
chocolate bar of all 12 that I tasted.

Bonnat’s Java chocolate bar is the third in this series
of chocolate. I tasted this one more recently (see review here), but wished I could have had all three on hand to compare.
Based on memory of taste of the others, I found it less smoky than Asfarth and Surabaya. This may have changed based on the cacao harvest year, because Eagranie Euh, the author behind the Chocolate Tasting Kit, wrote in a 2013 article in Table Matters that the Java bar is smokier than the Surbaya bar(ref).

Julia Moskin, author of the 2008 New York Times article “Dark May Be
King, but Milk Makes a Move”says that Bonnat’s Java bar has a strong caramel
and bitter flavour. I found heavy aromas of cream, yet a taste of cedar and woodiness, with a cooked creamy chocolate truffle taste and dark and intense caramel taste.

Taste:
This little Canadian chocolate maker got the name of the bar just right with
its 50% rich-tasting milk chocolate. Read
my review here.Nihant Melaya Area - Bali Sukrama Brothers' Farm, 55% Cocoa
(62 Hour Conch Trinitario)
Ben & Chocolats SPRL (Belgium)http://www.benoitnihant.be/
Ingredients: Organic cocoa beans, organic coconut blossom sugar, whole milk powder, cocoa butter.I paid $9.99 online price at La Tablette de Miss Choco (www.latablette.ca). Taste: Described on the package as "Very healthy milk chocolate with coconut blossom sugar." It is also considered 'stone-ground' chocolate.Initially there is an I-can't-put-my-finger-on-it flavour, which is perhaps a mix between the coconut sugar taste, the acidity, and the origin flavour. Although there is cocoa butter in the chocolate, it is not as detectable as in some other bars. Definitely a browned butter flavour and just a hint of sour cream taste. The texture is not fully gritty like in a Taza-stone ground way, but rather, seems to have the effect of crumbliness. It is intriguing, and definitely worth a try up against a high-cocoa butter smooth chocolate, such as Chocolat Madagascar or Michel Cluizel, or perhaps Patric, to comprehend the differences. Very tangy and reminds me a little of Fruition's salted dark milk chocolate.Interestingly they also make a 50% Madagascar dark milk chocolate and a 50% Bali (neither is made with coconut sugar, like this one). I really should have tried these other two dark-milk bars at the same time to understand if that bold tart flavour and interesting texture is from the coconut sugar, or their distinct chocolate-making process, etc.Chocolat Madagascar 50%, 85g
Chocolaterie Robert (Madagascar)www.chocolatmadagascar.com
Ingredients: Madagascar Cocoa Beans, cane sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder. Emulsifier: GMO Free Soy Lecithin, cocoa solids 50% minimum. Milk Solids 25%.
Winner of the International Chocolate Awards 2014 AMERICAS Gold. I paid $8.99 online price from La Tablette de Miss Choco (www.latablette.ca). Taste: Very similar to Michel Cluizel's 50% Mangaro in texture and taste. There is a distinct caramel-flavour and a texture that is so creamy, it is quite an enjoyable experience. It is very creamy, nearly as creamy as the Bonnat dark-milk chocolate bars. The creaminess is overpowering the origin flavours, but the experience is worth the loss. I love how upfront they are about milk solids - with 25% milk solids and 50% cocoa solids, we can calculate that this chocolate has the equivalent in sugar to a 75% dark chocolate (although much higher in fat content!). I love it.

Taste:In the Fall of 2015, I fell in love with a new style of chocolate, thanks to Zotter's Labooko Milk Chocolate "dark style: 70% bar without sugar! And this does not mean that alternate sugars, like Maltitol or Stevia are in it, this means NO SWEETENER at all. Zotter essentially made a milk chocolate version of a 100% cacao chocolate, or otherwise known as unsweetened chocolate. This was not only delicious, but brilliant. Zotter also makes a 50% dark milk with Nicaragua cocoa beans that I have yet to taste, but given my experience with Zotter's chocolate so far, I am sure it is delicious.

Taste: I really quite liked this milk chocolate - it was certainly a dark-milk chocolate, but creamy and quite nice. Admittedly, I ate it rather quickly because I liked it, but didn't take down enough tasting notes before I finished the bar. I can say that it is definitely worth a try! I believe organic Brazilian cocoa beans were used to make this bar of chocolate, just the same as the rest of Bruama's products.

Bruama's products can be purchased online (here) and shipped (no shipping cost to Canadian addresses), or found in Allegra Flowers & Gifts, and in the O & V Tasting Room, both located in Cambridge. Alternately, you can e-mail them at bruamas@bruamas.com for more info, to buy their chocolate or to buy wholesale.

Dark-Milk Chocolate Bars with No Ultimate Chocolate Blog Tasting Notes:Acalli Chocolate (New Orleans, LA) - Acalli's 'Milk & Nibs' bar has 65% cocoa solids and has only three ingredients: organic cacao, organic sugar, organic milk. The back side of the bar is sprinkled with cocoa nibs and looks very interesting. The cacao was sourced from the Norandino Cooperative in northern Peru. This chocolate bar can be purchased online: http://www.acallichocolate.com.

Felchlin (Switzerland) - Felchlin makes a Maracaibo Créole 49% dark milk chocolate that comes highly recommended by expert, Clay Gordon, of TheChocolateLife.com. Tasting notes by Felchlin mention raspberry notes, and a vanilla-bourbon and honey flavour. Learn more here. Distributors can be found here.Friis-Holm won the International Chocolate Awards World 2014 Gold prize for
their Dark Milk 65% and a Gold – Directly Traded award for the Dark Milk 65%
same year, in 2013 wonthe World Gold
for their Dark Milk 55% bar. Both bars ranked highly in 2012, with the 55%
winning Silver. Both bars are made from single origin Nicaragua beans (http://www.friis-holm.dk/en/awards/).
Interestingly, the website says that the chocolate is made in France by
Bonnat, with the ideas generated by Mikkel Fris-Holm in Denmark.The website says the next step is to have a
bean-to-bar operation in Denmark. Two
locations in the U.S. carry Friis-Holm’s chocolate, as well as some in the U.K.
and throughout the world.Find out where
here: http://www.friis-holm.dk/en/dealers/.
Duffy’s Honduras Mayan Milk Chocolate Bar 61% and Venezuela Ocumare 55% http://duffyschocolate.co.uk/shop/chocolate-bars/honduras-mayan-milk-61.Hotel Chocolat (UK, several locations) Supermilk 65 collection - comes straight up, in 'puddles' (drops) or in flavours like Popcorn and Earl Grey tea. Read the whole 'Supermilk' story here: http://www.hotelchocolat.com/uk/about/supermilk.Bar au Chocolat (Manhattan Beach, CA) Dominican Republic 60% ($12 U.S. online price)Chocolate Tree (Edinburgh, Scotland) Peru Marañon 48%

About Me

I am on a mission to taste all of the world's best chocolate, and to share what I have learned with you! As a chocolatier, pastry professional and business owner with an obsession for tasting new kinds of chocolate daily, and with creating something new in my commercial kitchen every week, I can share all sorts of tips, tricks and techniques for 'chocolatiering', bean-to-bar chocolate making, and for baking. Join me on this journey for recipes, reviews, and chocolaty gift ideas by way of my chocolate blog (www.ultimatechocolateblog.blogspot.com), my facebook page (The Ultimate Chocolate Blog), twitter (@ultimatelychoc) or Intagram (@ultimatelychocolate).
And be sure to check out the web site of Ultimately Chocolate, my chocolate and pastry business (www.ultimatelychocolate.com) in Canada. Oh, and I LOVE to make Piecaken and share my recipes at www.piecaken.blogspot.com.